


Chasing After Monsters

by Roca



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-06-05 01:23:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 3,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6683782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roca/pseuds/Roca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Giles/Jenny drabbles and ficlets set in various times and places.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tense

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Eclectic_Bookworm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Eclectic_Bookworm/gifts).



Giles has always prided himself on being literary. To his young charges, this more or less defines him: Giles runs the library. Giles knows books.

A simple change of tense should be easy for him. He wrote a two hundred-page Watcher’s dissertation on vampiric social dynamics, for Christ’s sake. He’s scrawled out at least twice as much as that in accumulated reports to the Council.

But every time he thinks about her, every time he talks about her, he slips up. Jenny _stays_. Jenny _does_. Jenny _is_. He cannot help but stumble over the words as he corrects back to the stark and awful alternative. Jenny _stayed_. Jenny _did_. Jenny _was_.

She is confined to one tense now, and he hates it, because Jenny had never let herself be confined to anything before. But neither of them have much of a choice anymore, not according to the rules of the English language. No more is she in the present. No more will she be in the future. He could use the conditional, on occasion, but what would be the point?

Perhaps it is just better to never talk of her at all.


	2. Concussion

The doctor gives her the rundown: rest, refrain from activities that require concentration or physical strain, take acetaminophen for headaches. This isn’t the first time Rupert has come here to get a concussion treated, and it probably won’t be the last.

Jenny sent the kids home as soon as the fight was over. It was still a school night, and all of them were scraped up and exhausted. They protested at first, wanting to come along and make sure that Giles was alright, but she waved them away. “He’ll be fine,” she told them, bundling a dazed Rupert into the passenger seat of her Bug.

Now, she can’t help but feel that she lied to them a little. There isn’t a chance in hell that Rupert is going to listen to the doctor’s orders, except maybe the one about painkillers. He’d never miss a day of training with Buffy, and he’s going to be the first one cracking open the books the next time some demonic crisis comes knocking (and knowing Sunnydale, that will only be a matter of days).

She drives him home when he’s done being scolded by Sunnydale Memorial’s medical staff. He still has a bleary look about him, but he’s coherent enough to make arrangements to pick up his car from the cemetery in the morning. She feels a pang of pity as she looks at him, standing as though lost on his own doorstep, and it disquiets her. What are they  _ doing _ ? They are too old to be chasing after monsters and too young to get themselves killed that way.

Somebody has to do it, she supposes. She just wishes it wasn’t the kids, or herself, or  _ him _ .

 


	3. Alone

After the spell is broken, after she scrambles out of Buffy’s basement and walks quickly through the night to retrieve her car from the school, Jenny takes a long shower.

She lets the spray was away the failed attempt at reconciliation, the humiliation of how the spell made her act, the sickly feeling of Eyghon that rises in her throat when she remembers what it was like to lose control of herself again. Jenny finds herself checking her thoughts, trying to make sure that they are real and her own. Of course, a spell would make them seem that way, so the whole thing is kind of pointless. She does it anyway.

Before, she could talk to Rupert about this sort of thing. It’s frightening, sitting here and contemplating the implications of the supernatural by herself. She brews some tea, just to give herself the illusion of comfort, but it only makes her wish for him more. It’s stupid, and she’s  _ stronger _ than this, but she’s too tired to fight off nostalgia.

She doesn’t sleep that night, and it takes all of her makeup artistry to hide the ever-expanding circles under her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first three oneshots came from prompts drummed up by The_Eclectic_Bookworm for Calendiles Day. Cheers!


	4. Fling

Despite her best efforts, Jenny cannot get him to dance.

Buffy, looking frazzled yet exuberant, sways next to Angel in her tattered white dress. (She keeps an eye on this, but can’t bring herself to be too worried. After saving the world, perhaps they both deserve a bit of happiness.) Willow and Xander bop near the punch bowl, awkward but cheerful.

Giles, for his part, staunchly refuses to budge. The two of them lean against the opposite wall from the rest of the Spring Fling chaperones (who, upon their arrival, took in their grubby and somewhat battered appearance with only mild concern), and he rebuffs her every attempt to cajole him onto the dance floor. It’s hard to tell whether it’s post-apocalypse fatigue or fear of embarrassment that keeps him in place. She’s restless, however, and eventually winds up asking him if he wants to go out for some fresh air. He glances swiftly at Buffy (and she can’t blame him for not wanting to let her out of his sight, all things considered), but he agrees. They push through the throng of dancing students and out into the mild evening.

Once they get outside, where she can see his face in the muted glow of the streetlights, she settles on “exhaustion” as being the most probable factor in his dancing embargo. Hell, she can feel it herself. She doesn’t know why she says it, but it slips out before she can stop herself:

“Are you doing okay?”

He squints at her, absently touching the dark bruise at his jaw.

“As well as could be expected, under the circumstances.”

“That was pretty intense, huh?” It’s kind of a stupid observation, but his laugh isn’t condescending.

“Even on the Hellmouth, it definitely would qualify as an exciting afternoon.”

“You must be crazy,” Jenny says, shaking her head. “Or at least crazy brave.” She sees him blush in the near-darkness, and she’ll be damned if it isn’t kind of cute.

“Well,” he tells her, “I don’t know if I’d say…”

“You’re a regular badass, aren’t you?” Teasing him is the first bit of much-needed levity she’s had today, and really, she can’t get enough of that ridiculous little half-smile he fits in between his stammering. “Who’d have thought?”

“I-”

“It’s a good look for you.”

He looks at her with bemused almost-fondness, and they’re both so fried yet exhilarated from saving the world, and the punch bowl was definitely spiked a little bit, so maybe that’s why she kisses him.

The exhaustion drops away fast, replaced by a welcome kick of the adrenaline high they’ve been riding all night. Soon they’re making out against the wall of the alleyway and God, they’re worse than teenagers. It’s more than she expected, but the “damn-we-almost-just-died” thrill is still rattling in her bones and urging her on.

She pulls away first, with a bit of effort, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand and looking up at him in breathless amusement.

“Woah,” she murmurs.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he says immediately. “I didn’t mean to overstep my bounds, or-”

“Hey, I’m not complaining.” She flashes him her coyest smile, and the look on his face is priceless. She wants to press this further, see where it goes — but something in her chimes in with reminders of duty and vengeance and blood, and she leans away involuntarily. “But we’d better get inside before the kids notice we’re missing.”

He nods, looking a little dazed, and they duck back inside. Every time she catches his eye for the rest of the evening, she can’t help but smile.

And in the end, she does coax him into dancing. She’s not even fazed when he turns out to be good — way better than she would have guessed.

She’s gotten used to Giles surprising her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday Queen C!


	5. Gleam

“Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,    
Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,  
A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea  
Somewhere at the end of it, heaving.”

— Sylvia Plath, _Blackberrying_

* * *

 

The picnic was his idea.

Giles worried, briefly, as he was preparing to ask her, that she would laugh at him for proposing such a date (and they were dates now, with no question about it), but Jenny merely grinned and requested that he pack the baskets.

“I can do peanut butter and jelly, but that’s about the extent of my culinary skills,” she cheerfully confessed. “I’ll handle the champagne and you can handle the food.”

And, smiling with relief and mounting excitement, he nodded and set about making plans.

Now, Jenny sits beside him in the passenger seat of his Citroën, squinting off into the horizon and occasionally badgering him about their destination. After the ill-fated — but, despite all his claims to the contrary, still somewhat enjoyable (if only for Jenny’s presence) — outing to the monster truck rally, Giles feels that it is his turn to giver her a surprise.

When they arrive at the hillside — a secluded little place a ways north of Oxnard, not far from the beach — Giles unloads the basket and blankets while Jenny looks around. The sky is wide and sincerely blue, dotted with mother-of-pearl clouds, and the sun-drenched grass rolls endlessly before them. He feels a bright gleam of happiness when Jenny turns to him with delighted laugh. She loops one arm around his and then pulls him in for an impulsive but heartfelt kiss, and he can feel her lips curling into a smile beneath his.

The hill is not steep, but the day is warm enough that he is compelled to pull off his jacket as they climb. Jenny never releases him, instead tangling their fingers idly as she peers about for a glimpse of the ocean. It is a casual intimacy, but even holding her hand is enough to make in irrepressible fluttering feeling rise up in his chest.

Jenny whistles appreciatively at the spread he has prepared — creamy potato salad and soft rolls and crisp cucumber sandwiches. “Do you think you packed enough food, England?” she teases. “We could last for days out here with all of this.”

“A Watcher is always well-prepared,” he tells her solemnly, and she grins. 

Truly, her suggestion is a tempting one. He feels that he could spend the rest of his life wandering this golden hill with Jenny, and then is struck by the foolish sentimentality of the thought. What is coming over him?

The champagne is lukewarm, as they have forgotten to bring ice. Still, they both sip leisurely from their glasses. Jenny becomes even more loose and exuberant, and he almost imagines he can see the sparkles from the champagne dancing in her eyes. She settles against his chest, lazily pointing out interesting shapes in the clouds. The both of them laugh far too easily at the simplest things, though Giles, as the driver, has limited his imbibement. Instead, he concludes, he is drunk on Jenny.

When she proposes a stroll down to the seaside, he readily agrees. The path they find, to Jenny’s delight, is lined with blackberry bushes. Jenny deftly pulls berry after plump berry from amidst the tangles of thorns. Her fingers are soon stained with juice, and as she brushes the hair from her face, she leaves an unsettling dark red smudge across her cheek. Giles stares at it for a moment, inexplicably perturbed, and then swoops in to kiss it away. Jenny giggles and pulls him in closer, and the feeling vanishes.

At last, they make their winding way to the sea. Jenny runs to greet the waves as if they are old friends, returning with a polished bit of sea glass that she insists he keep in his pocket. She is still quite drunk, smiling recklessly at everything and nothing at all. When she turns to him — eyes now full of the glint of sunlight striking the water — he realizes, quite suddenly and quite inevitably, that he loves her.

He does not know what to make of this, or even what he should feel. So he does the only thing he can think of — he takes Jenny’s hand once again and lets the moment, the sound of the ocean, the feel of her skin against his wash over him, carrying him into a happiness he will never know again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Calendilesiversary, Celia.


	6. A Minute to Rest

It’s getting to be the time of night that Rupert starts hiding face-splitting yawns behind his book. Jenny herself is sprawled over her laptop, the stupid curlicue font of the latest demonology website blurring after a long night of research. There’s a crisis going on — some new kind of nasty creature they’ve got to figure out and then get rid of — so sleep isn’t really an option right now.

But a short pause would probably be okay, she decides as she rolls her shoulders to work out a tight spot in the middle of her back. She rises from her chair and crosses over to Rupert, perching herself on the couch beside him. He gives her a bleary, confused look as she pulls the book from his hands.

“Time for a break,” she tells him.

“There’s not— We can’t. Buffy needs to know what she’s dealing with.” He scrubs a hand across his face as though hoping to physically wipe away his exhaustion. His hair is rumpled, his tie is undone, and even the collar of his shirt is askew. She reaches out and smooths it down, letting her hand linger on the back of his neck.

“Buffy’s probably in bed right now. She’s not going to get any info we find until tomorrow morning at the earliest. Besides, we’re not going to find anything useful like this. You need to give yourself a minute to rest.” 

Rupert looks mutinous for a moment, but nods in acquiescence and makes as if to heave himself off of the couch, muttering something about brewing up a strong pot of Earl Grey. Jenny presses him back down.

“You sit tight. I’ve got it.” It is a mark of his fatigue that he doesn’t protest (Rupert is damn picky about his tea, in a sometimes-annoying-yet-mostly-adorable way) but instead settles back into the cushions.

Jenny bustles around in the kitchen for a minute, setting water to boil and tracking down the tea canisters and then just pacing aimlessly in an effort to keep herself awake. She glances over at Rupert once to see that he’s in the exact position she left him in, slumped in an weary stupor. The tea is definitely over-steeped by the time she finishes, but she reasons that that probably just means that it’ll have more caffeine in it. Jenny mentally congratulates herself for the brilliant breaktime idea. She’s definitely a bit more alert after spending some time on her feet, and she’s sure that she and Rupert are going to have this whole case blown wide open with another hour or so of research.

Except, when she returns with tea in hand, Rupert is laying against the couch, totally conked out. She takes in the sight with vague amusement, watching him shift about in his sleep and nearly knock his glasses off of his nose. He’s a light sleeper after years of learning to truly fear the things that go bump in the night, but he doesn’t notice as she carefully plucks away his glasses and digs out a spare blanket from the closet. It’s probably not overly comfortable on the couch, but Jenny figures that a few hours of crappy sleep are better than none at all. He barely stirs as she lays the blanket over him, and she can’t resist brushing a soft kiss against his temple before she straightens and heads back to her desk.

She brings both cups of tea with her. It’s looking like it’s going to be a longer night than she expected, and she’s going to need all the caffeine she can get. She can’t really bring herself to mind.

(Even though, yeah, the tea is  _ really _ bitter and gross.)


	7. Frivolous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bit of healing post-Becoming.

The doctors discharge Giles from the hospital after a few hours (he is, after all, suffering only from dehydration, a concussion, a minor case of rope burn, and a sense of guilt and horror that has sunk in deeper than his bones), but they keep Jenny for two days. She is unsteady when she is finally released — her ribs make most movement a challenge, and the blood loss keeps her off of her feet — so it is easier for the both of them to simply install her in his apartment so that he can tend to her without driving across town and back two or three times a day. The summer is pulled taut between worry for Buffy and the constant, bitter dread that still lingers in the back of his throat, and sometimes he thinks that the quiet moments when he lies at Jenny’s side and just _breathes_ with her are the only reason he hasn’t flown, crooked-winged and desperate, into despair.

 

* * *

 

“Read to me?”

Jenny asks it as a child would: unabashedly, with a voice turned lilting and slow by either the pain or the pain medication. She’s even lying like a child, curled up under the blanket with the sling on her arm pulled close against her chest. Her face, however, gives away the illusion: the faint lines that tension and fear have etched at the corners of her eyes give her the look of someone who has lived through a lifetime of grief.

Looking at her, hurt and fragile and infinitely precious, her fury and strength tucked out of sight beneath her exhaustion, all that he can think of is that she doesn’t deserve this. She doesn’t deserve stitches or slings or tired eyes, and she doesn’t deserve to have suffered this much because of _him_. The overwhelming guilt and unfairness of it all rises up in his throat, and he swallows hard before replying.

“Of course, darling. Anything you’d like.”

She smiles softly, though her eyes remain closed. “Surprise me.”

He rises, crossing his bedroom to crouch at the lowest of his shelves, and returns with a stack of the few sentimental books he owns: children's stories, well-worn with age and love, given to him countless years ago by parents or grandparents or nannies. Jenny’s mouth quirks as he starts in on _The House at Pooh Corner_ , and then she makes a quiet, contented noise and snuggles closer against him as he continues to read.

It seems only right that he share with her something soft and frivolous; that they explore a world where the fantastical does not go hand in hand with the horrifying and a sense of whimsy does not evoke creeping, bone-deep dread.

Jenny falls asleep against his shoulder halfway through the story, but Giles reads it through to the end for his own sake.


	8. Confined

Jenny realizes it’s strange that, in more than a year of working at Sunnydale High, she’s never really seen the interior of one of the school’s broom closets. They’re darker than she expected, and more cramped — but maybe that’s because they’re expected to hold one person max, and even then only for a few moments as the janitor extracts his mops and spray bottles. This tiny room definitely wasn’t intended to have a scared-shitless computer teacher and librarian crammed inside it at the same time.

She still doesn’t really get how they wound up in here instead of back at the library — they ran out into the hallway when they heard bangs and crashes from the cafeteria, and when Buffy tore around the corner with a pack of vampires at her heels, Rupert simply shoved her through the nearest door and followed her inside.

They’re pressed tightly together in the confined space, shoulder to trembling shoulder in the gloom. Rupert’s breathing is carefully controlled in a way that tells her that he’s just about out of his head with worry right now. She lays what she hopes is a comforting hand on the sleeve of his jacket, and he turns to look at her with a wild sort of desperation.

“I need to go back,” he tells her. “Buffy is out there with Spike, and she— I need to help her.”

In that moment, Jenny wants to pull a Buffy and sock him on the jaw right there. “You have got to be joking,” she hisses instead. “You have no weapons, no idea how many vampires are out there, and no clue where Buffy even is. I’m not letting you go out and get yourself killed.”

His face contorts for a moment, a mixture of anger and anguish crossing his features. “I’m responsible for her,” he says at last. It sounds like both a statement and a plea. “I have to go.”

“Okay.” Jenny bites her lip and looks away. Her eyes land on a broom propped up in the corner, and she snatches it up and hands it to him. It’s not much, but at least the handle is made of wood. “We can take this.”

“We?” he asks, alarmed. “Jenny…”  
“I’m not staying shut up in this closet alone.” Even as she says it, the helpless, claustrophobic feeling of the place closes in on her even more. “We’re going to go together and find Buffy, or a way out, or something.” 

Rupert looks as though he wants to argue, but instead positions the broom against the wall and gives it a sharp kick, snapping it in half. They freeze for a moment, but the sound doesn’t seem to have caught the attention of anyone or anything lurking outside.

He hands her the better of the jagged-ended halves, the one without the mop head attached, and gives her a quiet nod. Together, they edge cautiously out into the hallway.


End file.
